British journalist Andy Worthington, the author of “The Guantanamo
Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison,”
has been documenting the array of human rights abuses at Guantanamo for
over six years now, after he personally became angry that the US
government would not say who they were holding at Guantanamo.
Worthington was recently a guest speaker alongside investigative
journalist Jason Leopold at the UC Hastings College of Law, in San
Francisco on January 13, 2012, hosted by the college’s chapter of the
National Lawyers Guild. The event, entitled “Ten Years of Guantanamo,”
was held amidst protests around the world calling for the prison to be
immediately shut.

Leopold, who has also written extensively about Guantanamo for
Truthout, queried Worthington about a range of issues surrounding
Guantanamo and the so-called “war on terror.” While exchanging stories
of false imprisonment and torture, both journalists expressed a profound
moral outrage, openly supporting a global coalition of human rights
activists’ call to shut the prison down, and, at a minimum, to release
prisoners already cleared for release. Most of the conversation examined
the reasons why the prison has not yet been closed, and then how, with
these reasons in mind, activists can best strategize their organizing
tactics for targeting lawmakers and building public support for
closure.

While strategizing about ways to gain public support for shutting
Guantanamo down, both Leopold and Worthington converged on the need to
expose the extreme fearmongering perpetrated by US leadership in order
to justify the human rights nightmare created by the war on terror.
Looking specifically at the rhetorical strategies used to advocate for
the recently passed National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA),
Worthington commented that elected officials are either “scared and
[therefore are] disgraceful cowards or they’re scaremongers, and I think
most of them are scaremongers. They’re playing the fear card. It’s an
insult to you … we face such grave economic problems at the moment,
that to have these idiots obsessing only about a terrorism threat that
they conjured up, is a disgrace.”

A central focus of Worthington and Leopold’s discussion was the Obama
administration’s role in keeping Guantanamo open, despite the
Executive Order that he issued on his second day of office calling for
it to be closed. Leopold asserted, “There seems to be a certain segment
that really does want to protect President Obama, not casting blame on
him and shifting it onto Congress.”

Worthington agreed that President Obama shares as much responsibility
as Congress, arguing that as soon as Obama issued the Executive Order
to shut down Guantanamo, prisoners should have been released. “There had been 65 prisoners still held, who had been cleared for
release by military review boards under the Bush administration. When
Obama came into office, he could have released some of those guys
easily. But he did nothing,” said Worthington, adding that “it means
nothing” to tell a prisoner that “we want to release you,” but can’t do
it because of the political environment. “It makes such a mockery of
any concepts of justice and the law,” Worthington declared.

The Mainstream Media and Guantanamo’s “True Secret”

Jason Leopold

Together, Leopold and Worthington dissected mainstream media coverage
around the tenth anniversary, arguing that coverage was superficial,
with no real follow-up after the initial January 11 anniversary. Worthington told of an experience at a press conference earlier in the
week, where a US journalist suggested that perhaps President Obama has
not shut Guantanamo down because of some “dark secrets” that cannot be
made public for legitimate reasons of national security.

Worthington recounted telling this journalist that the truth is “much
more mundane” than “some huge national security secret…. It’s about
cruelty, incompetence, embarrassment … issues where senior officials
and senior lawyers are responsible for things that might rise to the
level of war crimes. But above all, it’s about the torture, abuse,
coercion and bribery that was in Guantanamo. There was a ‘house of
cards’ of evidence built out of nothing except the testimony of
prisoners and their fellow prisoners, who were abused or persuaded in
other ways to produce what masquerades as the evidence. That’s the true
secret.”

Taking an even deeper look into Guantanamo Prison’s “true secret,”
Leopold described an interview he conducted with a Guantanamo lawyer
defending a so-called “high-value detainee.” Leopold could not even ask
the lawyer what he’d had for lunch when meeting with the detainee,
which Worthington confirmed was representative of how “nothing has been
made unclassified” about those prisoners designated as high-value
detainees.

“Why would that be? Would it happen to be coincidental that these
were the guys who were held in secret CIA torture prisons for all these
years, and the government is determined to keep a lid on any mention
of that whatsoever? I can’t see that there could possibly be any other
conclusion,” said Worthington.

The DC Circuit Court vs. Habeas Corpus

Andy Worthington

A June 2004 ruling by the US Supreme Court granted habeas corpus
rights to the wartime prisoners at Guantanamo. Worthington argues that
this is because the court recognized that they weren’t being granted
the rights in the Geneva Conventions accorded to soldiers. In response
to this decision, “Bush’s Congress” tried to revoke these habeas corpus
rights, and, in 2008, the Supreme Court affirmed their habeas corpus
rights and ruled that Congress had acted unconstitutionally.

Following the 2008 ruling, the Guantanamo prisoners were then “able
to file their cases in front of District Court judges in Washington DC,
who all got together to decide how they were going to do it, to decide
what kind of standard was required to detain people, because the
Supreme Court had not spelled that out. Nobody ever had really properly
spelled out what an ‘enemy combatant’ meant,” said Worthington. They
decided that it meant the accused person had to be part of al-Qaeda or
the Taliban.

Commenting on this decision, Worthington emphasized that the
“fundamental problem identified – ‘Are you a terrorist or a soldier?’ –
wasn’t addressed … But at least they tried to codify what it meant.”
Worthington reported feeling vindicated when dozens of District Court
rulings harshly criticized the evidence being used against the
Guantanamo prisoners, with Worthington commenting that these rulings
read “remarkably like what I and other people who’ve been looking at
these cases closely for years have been saying.”

Around two dozen prisoners were released as a result of this process,
leading the government to appeal to the DC Circuit Court. Once there,
Worthington reports that the District Court judges did not adequately
test “the allegations made by the government,” or properly “balance
those against the claims made by the prisoners.”

“They’ve steadily – in ruling after ruling,” unfairly given
“presumption of accuracy to whatever nonsense the government comes up
with,” said Worthington. “We are hoping that the latest ruling will lead
to an appeal to the Supreme Court, and that the Court will take [it]
up.”

The NDAA’s Silver Lining

Andy Worthington

As Worthington and Leopold began to criticize the NDAA, Leopold
chided those who had objected to it solely because it meant that “US
citizens can be detained and go to Guantanamo … One thing that’s not
been discussed in this context is that indefinite detention is a human
rights issue, regardless of the fact that it involves Americans; it’s
simply a human rights issue.”

Worthington added: “I understand people’s concern about this applying
to US citizens, and I absolutely understand that lawmakers had US
citizens in mind, but they had foreigners in mind, as well. Where it
came from was Guantanamo, because it’s been happening for ten years in
Guantanamo. The foreigners have been thrown into a hole and held without
charges or a trial in indefinite military detention. It’s the same
thing.”
Analyzing it further, Worthington felt that the real intention of the
NDAA is “to make sure that no one can be released from Guantanamo,” by
creating a standard for release that is basically impossible to meet.
First off, it “requires the Secretary of Defense to guarantee that if a
prisoner is released, he will not be able to be involved in
anti-American actions. You can’t make that kind of guarantee … it’s
deliberately so.” The second key requirement is “not allowing anyone
released to a country where there is an allegation that there is a
single person from that country [who] has engaged in any recidivist
activities…. How is that supposed to be fair?”

Looking beyond these provisions mentioned, Worthington asserted that
“there is a glimpse of hope in this legislation that most people
haven’t noticed. There is a waiver in the legislation…. that says if
the president is prepared to tell Congress that he and his
administration are satisfied that releasing a prisoner is safe, he
does not have to jump through these impossible hoops. It means that the
president is giving himself and his administration the power to
release prisoners. Now, will he do it? He looks unlikely to do it
because anything he does about Guantanamo rocks a boat that he doesn’t
want rocked, and enables Republicans to speak up. But he could do it,
and we can put pressure on him.”

Focusing on how to create such political pressure, Worthington
reflected that “I think shame is where we’re at now, after ten years.”
Lawmakers should be told: “We know that you care about how you will be
thought of. It isn’t all just about short-term gain and political
expediency. You want to be remembered as a good man or woman who tried
to do a good job. You will not be remembered that way. No one in a
position of responsibility will be if they consistently and persistently
fail to close Guantanamo, because the longer it goes on, the more
shameful it will be …The last living person left there over a year ago.
After that, the last two people to leave were dead; they left in
coffins. That will continue to happen.”

(Permission is granted to reprint as long as Truthout is cited as the original source)

–Angola 3 News is an official project of the International
Coalition to Free the Angola 3. Our website is www.angola3news.com,
where we provide the latest news about the Angola 3. Additionally we are
also creating our own media projects, which spotlight the issues
central to the story of the Angola 3, like racism, repression, prisons,
human rights, solitary confinement as torture, and more. Our articles
and videos have been published by Alternet, Truthout, Counterpunch,
Monthly Review, Z Magazine, Indymedia, and many others.

Read Robert H. King's Autobiography

Angola 3 Basics

44 years ago, deep in rural Louisiana, three young black men were silenced for trying to expose continued segregation, systematic corruption, and horrific abuse in the biggest prison in the US, an 18,000 acre former slave plantation called Angola.

Peaceful, non-violent protest in the form of hunger and work strikes organized by inmates caught the attention of Louisiana’s elected leaders and local media in the early 1970s. They soon called for investigations into a host of unconstitutional and extraordinarily inhumane practices commonplace in what was then the “bloodiest prison in the South.” Eager to put an end to outside scrutiny, prison officials began punishing inmates they saw as troublemakers.

At the height of this unprecedented institutional chaos, Herman Wallace, Albert Woodfox, and Robert King were charged with murders they did not commit and thrown into 6x9 foot solitary cells where they remained for decades.

“Hezekiah was one you could put words in his mouth,” the Warden reminisced chillingly in an interview about the case years later.

Notably, Teenie Rogers, the widow of the victim, prison guard Brent Miller, after reviewing the evidence believed Herman and Albert’s trials were unfair, expressed grave doubts about their guilt, and called upon officials to find the real killer. "“Each time I look at the evidence in this case, I remember there is no proof that the men charged with Brent’s death are the ones who actually killed him. It’s easy to get caught up in vengeance and anger, but when I look at the facts, they just do not add up,” said Rogers in 2013.

Albert’s conviction was overturned three times by judges citing racial discrimination, prosecutorial misconduct, inadequate defense, and suppression of exculpatory evidence. While the case worked its way through endless appeals, Louisiana officials refused to release Albert from solitary, even when no longer convicted of the crime, because “there’s been no rehabilitation” from “practicing Black Pantherism.”4

Finally, Albert was released in February of 2016, 43 years and 10 months after first being put in isolation for a crime he didn’t commit.

Louisiana today has the highest incarceration rate in the US—thus the highest in the world.

Three-fourths of the 5,000+ prisoners at Angola are African American. And due to some of the harshest sentencing practices in the nation, 97% will die there.

Reminiscent of a bygone era, inmates still harvest cotton, corn and wheat for 4 to 20 cents an hour under the watchful eye of armed guards on horseback.

We believe that only by openly examining the failures and inequities of the criminal justice system in America can we restore integrity to that system.

We must not wait.

We can make a difference.

As the A3 did years before, now is the time to challenge injustice and demand that the innocent and wrongfully incarcerated be freed.

Cruel and Unusual Punishment

In 2000, Herman, Albert and Robert filed a civil lawsuit challenging the inhumane and increasingly pervasive practice of long-term solitary confinement. Magistrate Judge Dalby described their decades of isolation as “so far beyond the pale” she could not find “anything even remotely comparable in the annals of American jurisprudence.” Over the course of 16 years, this seminal case detailed unconstitutionally cruel and unusual treatment and systematic due process violations at the hands of Louisiana officials and inspired worldwide action to end long term solitary.

Support Our Work!

Stepping Across to Freedom

Please join us in laying the foundation for Albert’s new life. We’ll never be able to make up for over four decades in solitary but those of us in minimum security know how costly life out here can be. 100% of all donations will be given directly to Albert.

You can use the "Support Our Work" donate button (directly above) or go directly to our fiscal sponsor, Community Futures Collective and designate "Albert" in the memo.

From the entire Angola 3 community- thank you.

Amnesty International video interview with Robert H King: "Slavery Still Reigns in US Prisons"

Angola 3 News, a project of the International Coalition to Free the Angola 3, presents the latest news about the A3, and we also create our own media projects, spotlighting the issues central to the story of the A3, like racism, repression, prisons, human rights, solitary confinement as torture, and more. Our articles and videos have been published by Alternet, Truthout, Black Commentator, Black Agenda Report, SF Bay View Newspaper, Counterpunch, Facing South, Poor Magazine, Monthly Review, Z Magazine, LA Progressive, Dissident Voice, New Clear Vision, Nation of Change, Infoshop News, WW4 Report, Firedoglake, Indymedia, and many others.

Please help spread the word about our website and online networking at You Tube, Care2, Twitter, Facebook. For more info, please contact the A3 Coalition and visit our other websites:

Kenny 'Zulu' Whitmore

Zulu has been in Louisiana State Prison, Angola, LA since March 14, 1977. He had been in jail since 1975.

After threats and torture if he did not plead guilty, an unfair trial and the use of false information, Zulu was in '77 sentenced to life + 99 years for the 1973 murder of the former mayor of a small town, in which he had no part whatsoever.

Get a Zulu T-Shirt

FreeZulu.org

Kenny 'Zulu' Whitmore

“Zulu is a true warrior, Panther, a servant of the people. He has fought a good battle, for so long, unrecognized, unsupported!” --Robert Hillary King

ABOUT ZULU:

I am Kenny Zulu Whitmore. I have been enslaved in one of the most brutal and bloodiest prisons in the USA, Angola, LA, the "last slave plantation". Framed for a murder I never committed I have been in solitary confinement for over 30 years now.....

In December 1973 I was arrested on frivolous charges and held over for a magistrate hearing where a bond would be set. While awaiting my court appearance I found myself in a cage right across from a black man who struck me as a fearsome revolutionary. It turned out to be Herman Wallace. I was impressed with his words of wisdom, which enabled me to better understand the treatment and condition of my community by the police. I felt honored just to have been in his presence. There were others on the unit, but all you could hear was the voice of Herman. We talked all through the night after he learned why I was arrested. He explained that if my concern was to protect the people, my only route of doing so would be to educate myself of the political Kingdom and then organize the people to effectively challenge the ill that cripple the people. I realized my speaking out against drug dealers and police brutality alone would be viewed as a personal war and wouldn't achieve anything.

Herman told me he and others had established a chapter of the Black Panther Party in Angola, to fight against prison corruption. I gave him all my information because what he spoke of was what I needed in my life. I dare say it was my first true political education. The next day I learned he was there on trial for the death of a prison guard. At that time I believed he didn't stand a chance. In the mean time history has proven I was wrong. However, instead of focusing on his trial, he had many questions about community service and conditions. I ended up giving him my name and address. He told me he was officially making me a member of the Angola Chapter of the Black Panther Party. I was very honored but I had no idea what this man expected of me. But I knew about the Panthers and so I went back to the community with the idea of organizing the community against illegal drug trafficking.

On February 19, 1975 I was arrested again. This time charged with two counts of armed robbery of a Zachary shoe store. In June of 1975 all charges were dropped after both victims argued with the judge that I was not the person who did this crime. But I still couldn't go free...Read more here.WRITE ZULU: